by Amy Sparling
No one messes with that type of woman. And no one's going to mess with me.
A dark figure sits on the sidewalk up ahead. He's some kind of punk emo kid, dressed in all black with a black hoody pulled up over his head. His bangs, dyed black probably, swoop over his forehead, blocking most of his face. He's sitting there holding his iPod, swaying his head all slowly to the music, like it's filling up his soul with every beat.
He notices me as I get closer to him. "Hi," I say, surprisingly cheerful for this time of night and with this somber mood I've been in all day. Maybe I feel compelled to put some happiness in this loser's life. Maybe I'm just delirious from lack of sleep. Maybe I’m the loser, not him. "Great night, huh?"
"It is never a great night," he says, glaring at me. At least, I think he's glaring but the shadows bounce off the brick wall he's leaning against and cover the half of his face not hidden by his hair. I'm not even sure a mother could love a face so filled with cynicism.
"Yeah, have fun with that way of thinking." I smack my gum and leave him to wallow in a puddle of his own self-pity.
The pawn shop has a smoky haze permeating throughout the room, covering guitars, exercise bicycles and old video game systems. The source of the smoke drifts off a cigar in the hand of an obese middle-aged man with a laughable comb over. I imagine myself as Uma Thurman in Kill Bill as I slip the velvet box out of my pocket and put it on the glass counter in front of us.
"How much will you give me for this?"
His chubby fingers open the box and take out the ring. He studies it under a magnifying glass. The only sound for a long time is his wheezy breathing. "I'll give you five hundred, just cuz' you're a pretty little thing."
"I want two thousand." I clench my jaw to avoid inhaling his gross cigar smoke, but also to maintain my no-nonsense façade.
"Two thousand?" He laughs, a rusty old man laugh. "You must be all beauty, no brains. I ain't givin' you two thousand."
"It's appraised at thirty-two hundred." I reach across the countertop and put my hand over the ring box, afraid he may steal it or something.
"This ain't no jewelry shop. If you want two grand, you shoulda gone somewhere else."
"Nowhere else is open at midnight," I say, sliding the ring box closer to me. He stares at me, either lost in thought or spacing out from years of drug use. The neon pawn shop sign buzzes over us, making the silence unbearable. I slide the box into my pocket and turn to leave.
"Wait a minute," he says so quickly that he bursts into a gurgly smoker's cough. "Let me see it again."
I take it out of my pocket, open it and place it in front of him. The one-point-four carat diamond sparkles under the fluorescent lights. I wish it were daylight so he could see how beautiful it truly is. The man holds up his dirty magnifying glass and examines it again. I look at the rings on display under us; none of them even compare to mine. My stomach tightens. I should have waited and gone to a real jewelry shop.
But I don't have time to wait.
He takes it out of the box and puts it on his finger. The gold band only goes as far as his yellowed fingernail. "How did a girl like you get a ring this nice, anyhow?"
"Inheritance."
His eyebrows come together. "You can't pawn an heirloom. That's just wrong."
"And I'm supposed to believe your moral character, why?"
He grunts. "It just ain't right."
I cross my arms. "My grandmother was divorced. She wouldn't care." I can almost see her face up on her Heaven cloud, nodding in approval. That lying, cheating bastard, she'd say. Sell it.
"I'll give you fifteen hundred. Final offer."
"Two thousand."
"Nineteen hundred."
"Nineteen hundred plus one hundred more."
I don't look away as we stare at each other for an uncomfortably long time. He pushes a button on the cash register and the drawer pangs open, slapping him in the gut. "Fine."
I revamp my Uma Thurman impression as I leave the pawn shop with an extra two grand in my pocket. I add in a little Chyna, that jacked female wrestler from back in the day. Now fully confident, and somewhat manish, I head back to the Ford, which is parked at Joe's Diner two blocks away. That emo kid is still on the sidewalk.
He sees me coming and tosses his head back to rest on the wall behind him. His eyes are closed and he's really feeling the groove of his music now. His fingernails are painted black too. I should do humanity a favor and kick him in the balls right now. It's not like he has any, or he wouldn't be sitting here wasting away his life.
"What are you so sad about?" I say, all cocky-like, like I wanna bang our chests together and hoot and holler. Yeehaw!
Emo kid lifts up his head. "Wouldn't you like to know."
"Nope," I say, kicking a crushed Coke can out of my way. "I don't give a shit about your problems."
He stares at me now, shaking his head like I'm such a fool for disregarding him. Like he has all the answers in life, and he'd be happy to share them with me, but I wouldn’t want to hear it. Because he thinks the world is a low and sad place, not accepting of people like him.
Truth is, he doesn't know anything about anything. I bet he goes home to his loving parents and sleeps in his warm bed and works at Starbucks on the weekends for money to buy more music. I bet his emo gig gets him a lot of attention from other attention-starved emo girls.
What's he trying to prove by acting all sad? I bet he's never truly been sad in his whole life. You don't know what sad is until you do something really bad. Like if you accidentally kill your best friend. And once you've known sorrow like that, you don't have to wear all black to prove it.
I'm not.
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Table of Contents
Copyright © 2013 by Amy Sparling
For KristinaChapter 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Check out Amy’s other books with these excerpts:CHAPTER ONE
Excerpt from Phantom Summer by Amy SparlingCHAPTER 1